Latifah to Star in the Mali Anderson Mysteries - 1:09 p.m.
Latifah's attempt at taking Oprah's crown fell way short of the mark; she didn't even hit Ricki Lake territory. That hasn't diminished her ambitions, she is ready to jump back in the game with a detective drama series in conjunction with CBS. The show, still in development, is based on author Grace Edwards, Mali Anderson Mystery series.

Latifah will play the title star, a a former New York police detective who works as a private investigator out of her dad's apartment in the Strivers Row section of Harlem, N.Y., and takes care of her nephew, whose parents died in a skiing accident.

I'm reading books on the regular, but I gotta tell you, I've never heard of Grace Edwards. Do a quick search though and you'll find a lot of links about her books, but nothing about the woman herself. One site listed her bio as, "Grace Edwards was born and raised in Harlem and lives in Brooklyn. Sorry this is all I found so far." Ha ha.. that's some detail. She has been writing for a minute though, five books deep, with the first being published in 1997; that's about a book a year.

Thrilling Detective.com describes her main character pretty good, "Sometime-sleuth MALI ANDERSON is a savvy, street-smart student working towards a Ph.D. in social work with roots deep that go deep into her Harlem working class neighborhood. But this isn't some bleak, mean streets kinda film-at-eleven version of Harlem. Instead, it's a rich, vibrant, close-knit community full of music, shops, and colourful characters, a good number of them Mali's friends or relatives. And a good number of those pals seem to get into trouble, which Mali often finds herself "getting involved in" as well.

Family and community are important to Mali. She lives with her jazz musician father Jeffrey, and her 11-year- old orphaned nephew Alvin (Mali's sister was murdered). On the romantic front, there's "gorgeous" police detective Tad Honeywell, who often lends a hand. But her best informers are a slew of Harlem beauticians who work at Bertha's Beauty salon on Eighth (now Frederick Douglass) Avenue.

So there's plenty of amateur sleuth trappings here. But it would be a mistake to just dismiss Mali as just another spunky amateur sleuth. For starters, she's a former police officer herself. Okay, her career only lasted a couple of years, but that's because she punched out a fellow officer for making sexual slurs, but she was still a cop. So, she knows what she's doing. And at least occasionally she investigates for money. It makes a difference. And because her sexual harassment suit against the NYCPD is on-going, she's not exactly beloved by New York's Finest (except for Tad, of course)."

Sounds like it could be pretty interesting. And judging by the cover of this book, Latifah was perfectly cast.. doesn't it have that Set it Off  Cleo look to it?

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>

Magic Johnson Being Inducted into the Hall of Fame
Earvin "Magic" Johnson has defied the odds.. On November 7, 1991 when Magic announced that he had tested positive for the HIV virus, people were shocked and saddened. To some it was a wake up call to practice safe sex, others could give a damn and blamed his situation on his irresponsibility and promiscuous lifestyle.

One thing most people agreed on, a positive test for HIV was an equation with an eventual slow decline and an unfortunate death. Magic never held his head down, he attacked the disease the same way he used to attack the court. I think it was about a year or two later and a sports columnist in the NY Post got upset, saying that he shouldn't be parading around town with a smile on his face and acting like everything was alright. This genius said that Magic Johnson was encouraging kids to have promiscuous sex because see.. it didn't affect him so why should you worry about it. he claimed it was a farce because Magic would eventually pass away and that creating false hope in people was just wrong.

Here we are.. over ten years later and Magic is stronger than ever. Using a combination of daily exercise, a healthy diet, a few prescribed medicines and a focus on living a positive life, he's a testament to the mantra that some alternative doctors hold that says, "a positive test for HIV doesn't have to be a death sentence."

In an ESPN article, Doctor David Ho, a renowned AIDS expert, agrees -- "to the fact that Johnson has a sublime, upbeat attitude. He makes certain to eat right and to sleep right, and, of course, he has always had access, from day 1, to the most advanced medical treatment and most knowledgeable physicians in the world. His medication has kept his T-cell count high, and, as a result, his hematology tests show little or no trace of the virus."

After a brief return to the court in 1996, Magic retired again and tried his hand as the next Arsenio. That didn't work out, but he found his second calling in the business world. His idea was to he was to invest in the hood, putting movie theatres and coffee houses where nobody dared put them.

His ability to communicate his vision helped him to broker a deal to construct the first "Magic Johnson Theatre" in South Central, Los Angeles. When some gang members came to the construction site looking for work and were told by someone to beat it, they got upset and were threatening to picket the site. Johnson spoke to them personally and told them that they had to follow the rules of the game. He explained, "You didn't apply for the job. I'm gonna hire the best people available for the work. But you've got to apply for the job. These other people applied." So several of the gang members got a pen and applied, and helped build the place.

After the theatre was in operation he took a tour of the building and noted to some business partners that they had to change the menu. He said, "We got to get Strawberry soda on the menu. My people like flavors. We eat hot dogs and nachos." He was serious, and they changed the menu. It's said that he goes to movies there himself, all the time.

His next step was to get into the Starbucks franchise chain, he now owns over 30 of them. Add that onto his 5 percent stake in the Los Angeles Lakers, four more theatres, five TGI Fridays, and a Fat Burger restaurant.. and you have a $600 million man, worth way more than he was on the court.

The foundation hasn't been forgotten, today he'll be recognized for all that he did on that basketball court.. he'll be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. "Showtime" was personified by his leadership with the Los Angeles Lakers. It's very early, but I'll take a wild guess and say that 20 years from now Kobe will be receiving that Hall of Fame honor as well.

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>

RZA Chops it up with Tarantino - 1:38 p.m.
Quentin Tarantino, best known for Pulp Fiction, True Romance, and Reservoir Dogs  has called on the RZA to conjure up some of that old Wu-Tang magic for the soundtrack of his new flick Kill Bill.

The movie which features Uma Thurman and David Carradine is about a woman (Uma) who gets shot and comes out of a coma to kick ass, take names, and get some revenge. An excerpt from a working draft of the script explains it all..

"Looked dead, didn't I? Well I wasn't, but it wasn't for lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually Bill's Last bullet put me in a coma. A coma I was to lie in for five years. When I woke up,...I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. I roared and I rampaged and I got bloody satisfaction. In all, I've killed 33 people to get to this point right now. I have only one more. The last one. The one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination.... ...I'm gonna Kill Bill."

Sounds unspectacular, but if you like sick-action you can't go wrong with a Tarantino flick - he's known for the over-the-top violence and this one is set to be the bloodiest of them all. It's a hodge podge mixture of old Chinese kung fu flicks, like The Five Deadly Venoms  and western flicks like A Fistful of Dollars, needless to say it's chock full of severed limbs and flying gore. Early reports from the set, say that one scene required 100 gallons of blood.. the ketchup/syrup mixture of course.

Because of the ties to the kung fu world, and RZA's work on Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai,  Tarantino decided that RZA was the only guy that could do the soundtrack some justice. They had a meeting and Quentin showed RZA that he wasn't the only one who knew a lil something about The Shaw Brothers and Gordon Liu Chia, the famous bald monk. Reflecting on the meeting Rza said, "We started talking about kung fu, and every movie I named, Quentin knew what it was and what was going on in it. I was like,'Wow, I kinda met my match'."

Lars Urlich from Metallica was also called in to add a metal edge. He and RZA will attempt to make some bloody music together.

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>

Roll Out the Imitations
Robert Kelly's body isn't even cold yet, but already people are ready to strip him of his jewels, shake his pockets for change and pocket his 2-way. Listening to the radio yesterday, and this song comes on by this guy.. don't even know his name, but it definitely wasn't R Kelly. However the similarities in the style was just right in your face. Really sad. Lack of artistic creativity isn't relegated to rappers, throw in the male singers as well. It almost makes me want to see the man come back with some of the original recipe. I know BET wants him back, yesterday they showed an episode of How I'm Living featuring R Kelly. Didn't even watch it though.. figured it had to be old cause dude was smiling and playing basketball.

Not much has been going on with the case. The last I heard he was trying to get his brother, Carey Kelly, to take the case for him. The plan would be: Carey says it was him, takes the fall and R Kelly is vindicated and gets to tell everybody, "I told you so." Of course his brother would be fairly compensated - but not before he gets a nice vist from the butt boys in G block. That's all rumor though.

Carey Kelly was on Celebrity Justice a few weeks ago, when posed with the question he said, "I'd rather not even answer that because we don't even talk about that. We just talk about how to be there for each other as a family."

He went on to say that the tape could be a fake or something, which is nice.. but he's already documented as practically putting a bullet in the man's back. On a radio show (Doug Banks?) when asked if it was R Kelly was on the tape he said, "To be honest with you, that's my brother's face."

Nice job. But this is the same man who was on Judge Mathis  defending himself against a belly dancer who was suing him because he wouldn't pay her after she said she wouldn't strip for him.

No matter what happens to R Kelly, pee pee man or not, no matter if you don't buy or play one more song.. it's no excuse for other singers to start squeezing into his shoes. Nope, it wasn't Tank, it wasn't Avant.. Hah, if I can't remember his name then it doesn't even matter. Dude will have a long career, fo sho.

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>

Aaron McGruder Speaks on Iraq - 1:49 p.m.
Got in about 1:00 a.m. on Saturday night, switched on the television, flipping, flipping.. ain't nothing on. Wait a minute, what's this? Aaron McGruder, the creator of The Boondocks comic strip, is on CNN speaking about the war on terrorism. During his speech(?) he mentioned that he was recently on Nightline as well. Now I know he had made noise with the commentary about 9-11 in his strips, but I didn't know that it had gotten to the level where he's now giving lectures to a mainstream audience.

I remember him being interviewed by Tavis Smiley on BET Tonight a few years ago, he was way more reserved than he is now. A little uneasy in front of the camera. Dude has evolved quite a bit, he fielded questions and hammered out his points like a professional public speaker.

The main theme of his speech was that people in the media are afraid to tell the truth about what's going on in with politics, specifically with the foreign policy of the current administration. I'll paraphrase.. under the blanket of The War on Terrorism, Bush's people are making unprecedented decisions that are practically going unquestioned, as if everything he does is for the best. The Patriot Act, which had been rejected prior to 9.11, hit the express tracks on 9.12 which among other things, includes a policy that says if you are suspected to be a terrorist, you can be locked up without being charged with anything and without the right to legal counsel, indefinitely.

Which on the surface sounds like a good idea.. shit, who wants to get blown up or gassed by some crazed nut? An effective argument against it isn't so simple, you can point to the violation of civil liberties, but the fear of the slight possibility that a person might be involved in a plot wipes that out. Unfortunately, that's what is clouding any real conversation about this administration's policies.. fear. Fear of being unpatriotic and the manipulation of people's fear for undocumented ends.

I've been avoiding posting about politics lately, just because there are so many questions that have not been answered that it would seem like nonsense up against the daily dose of "news" that you get from the mainstream everyday. Without a site dedicated to the issues it just can't be done properly. Sure, when the bombs drop or something jumps out I'll say something but other than that.. nada.

In any case, here's Aaron McGruder.. this was a whole lot longer, but my computer literally ate the file. I had two pieces to merge together. In the process of saving them one overwrote the other.. usually you'd get a message saying your about to overwrite a file or do you want to.. Not this time. Chopped from 30 minutes to 7.. ouch!   -  Listen to it or Download it(Realaudio 880k)

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>

Roc Radio Returns
For me, Sunday night TV is supposed to be all about The Sopranos. A night of fun with the bada bing boys.

Hah.. a big HAH!. The season is only two episodes deep, but it's looking real depressing. There's only one more year left so I guess the writers are setting everybody up for their demise.. a nice flat landing: FBI runs in the door, people get killed, others get strung out on drugs. It's how most mob/hustler stories play out: first the good life, lots of money, power, the feeling of invincibility, and then the sad reality that it can't last forever. I'll ride it to the end though, I've got about two years invested in this show.

As the opening sequence began I looked at the time and remembered that the Dame Dash Show aka Roc Radio comes on at the same time. Grab the radio, hit record.. and here it is.

I realize that some people can't stand Dame or the Roc, but I'm sure some of you enjoyed hearing from a guy that's usually only seen doing that wild drunk on Vodka dance and stays far away from the mic.. you know, like he's not rapping or anything .. yet. This is a good place for a *pause* there's a rumor that he will be making an appearance on a record pretty soon. As he said last week, "it may be true or it may not be true" which probably means that it is. Ain't no boundaries out here.. Irv Gotti.. Dame Dash.. P Diddy.. hey, back in the day, even Russell Simmons did commentary on LL's "You Can't Dance".

The "special guest" this week is Beanie Sigel, if you can call that a special guest. It's not really an interview as much as it is a chance for him to say how much he's doing or has done. Supposedly he's more mature and focused on taking his State Property team to the stars. I'm guessing that by the time this show is over each and every Roc-A-Fella member will be up in the spot. Don't know about other artists being guests, a few "outside" songs are played during that hour, mostly it lives up to it's name. But it's Roc Radio, right? What do you expect.

This is about 17 minutes from the show: two songs, some callers ask questions, and "the power moment of the week." I'll keep doing this Monday excerpt of the show until he or we get tired of it. Listen to it or Download it (Realaudio 2.2 mb)

comments   (".$counter.") comment";} if($counter >=2){echo "(".$counter.") comments";} ?>